By Keith Brown, DTN Contributing Cotton Analyst 

Cotton ended sharply higher Wednesday as traders bought the market in anticipation of Thursday’s USDA data. As previously mentioned, the government will issue its weekly export sales report, as well as update its supply-demand estimates. Given the dollar posted extreme lows of last week, sales ought to be a dynamic number.

As far as the monthly crop report, traders are hoping government tabulators will aggressively dial in crop losses incurred from various hurricanes and ice storms. The last report had the 2020 U.S. crop unexpectedly raised some 400,000 bales to 17.09 million.

The technical trend of the markets remains intact, as it enters its eighth month of positive trading. In fact, Wednesday’s close was the third highest since the April COVID-19 low was nailed down. Such a pattern encourages speculative traders to only maintain their bullish positions, but to tack on additional contracts. At last count, certain managed-money speculators were net long about 60,000 contracts.

For Wednesday, March cotton closed at 73.05 cents, up 1.07 cents, July settled at 74.60 cents, up 0.98 cent and December 2021 ended at 71.73 cents, up 0.71 cent. Estimated volume was 23,774 contracts.